Armageddon (1998 film)

Armageddon
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Michael Bay
Produced by
Screenplay by
Story by
Based on Armageddon
by Tony Gilroy
Shane Salerno
Starring
Narrated by Charlton Heston
Music by Trevor Rabin
Cinematography John Schwartzman
Edited by
Production
company
Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures
Release date
  • July 1, 1998 (1998-07-01)
Running time
 151 minutes[1]
Country United States
Language English
Budget $140 million[2]
Box office $553.7 million[2]

Armageddon is a 1998 American science fiction disaster film directed by Michael Bay, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film follows a group of blue-collar deep-core drillers sent by NASA to stop a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with Earth. It stars Bruce Willis and an ensemble cast comprising, Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Owen Wilson, Will Patton, Peter Stormare, William Fichtner, Michael Clarke Duncan, Keith David, and Steve Buscemi.

Armageddon opened in theaters two and a half months after the similar asteroid impact–based film Deep Impact which starred Téa Leoni, Robert Duvall and Morgan Freeman. Although Armageddon fared better at the box office, astronomers described Deep Impact as being more scientifically accurate.[3][4] Armageddon was an international box-office success despite generally negative reviews from critics, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1998 worldwide.

Plot

A massive meteor shower destroys the orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis and bombards a swath of land around the North Atlantic, devastating New York City. NASA discovers through the Hubble Space Telescope that the meteors were debris propelled from the asteroid belt by a rogue asteroid roughly the size of Texas, christened "Dottie" by its discoverer. The asteroid will collide with Earth in 18 days, causing a second extinction event. NASA scientists, led by Dan Truman, plan to trigger a thermonuclear detonation at least 800 ft (244 m) inside the asteroid to split it in two, driving the pieces apart so both will fly past the Earth. NASA contacts Harry Stamper, considered the best deep-sea oil driller in the world, for assistance. Harry insists he will need his full team, consisting of A.J. Frost, Rockhound, Max Lennert, Charles "Chick" Chapel, Bear, Freddie Noonan and Oscar Choi, to help execute NASA's plan, and they agree to help.

NASA plans to launch two specialized Space Shuttle orbiters, the X-71s, Freedom and Independence, to increase the chances of success; the shuttles will refill with liquid oxygen from the 11-year-old Russian space station Mir (which is modified to have artificial gravity by rotating on itself) before making a slingshot maneuver around the Moon to approach the asteroid from behind. NASA puts Harry and his crew through a shortened and rigorous astronaut training program, while Harry's team re-outfit the mobile drillers, "Armadillos", for the job. During training, Truman and Harry are skeptical about the abilities of A.J., who has been dating Harry's daughter Grace against Harry's wishes.

The destruction of Shanghai by a meteorite forces the government to reveal the asteroid's existence, as well as their plan. The shuttles are launched and arrive at the space station, where its sole cosmonaut Lev Andropov helps with refueling. A major fire breaks out during the fueling process, forcing the crews, including Lev, to evacuate in the shuttles before the station explodes. The shuttles perform the slingshot around the Moon, but approaching the asteroid, the Independence's engines are destroyed by trailing debris, and it crash-lands on the asteroid, killing Noonan, Oscar, munitions specialist Lieutenant Halsey, and shuttle pilots colonel Davis and Tucker. Grace, aware A.J. was aboard the Independence, is traumatized by this news, believing he was killed. Unknown to the others, A.J., Lev and Bear survive the impact and head towards the Freedom target site in their Armadillo.

The Freedom manages to land on the asteroid, but overshoots the target zone, landing on a much harder metallic field than planned, and their drilling quickly falls behind schedule. The military initiates a backup plan called "secondary protocol", planning to remotely detonate the weapon at the asteroid's surface, despite Truman and Harry's insistence that it would be ineffective. Truman delays the military, while Harry convinces the shuttle commander Colonel Willie Sharp to disarm the remote trigger. Harry's crew continues to work, but in their haste, they accidentally hit a gas pocket, blowing their Armadillo into space with Lennert inside. As the world learns of the mission's apparent failure, another meteorite decimates most of Paris.

All seems lost until Independence's Armadillo arrives. With A.J. at the controls, they reach the required depth for the bomb. However, flying debris from the asteroid kills lieutenant Gruber and damages the triggering device, requiring someone to stay behind to manually detonate the bomb. The crew draw straws and A.J. is selected. As he and Harry exit the airlock, Harry rips off A.J.'s air hose and shoves him back inside, telling him that he is the son Harry never had and gives his blessing to marry Grace. Harry contacts Grace to bid his final farewell. After some last minute difficulties involving both the shuttle engines and the detonator, the Freedom moves to a safe distance and Harry triggers the detonation while his life flashes before his eyes. The bomb successfully splits the asteroid, avoiding the collision with Earth. The Freedom safely returns to Earth, and the surviving crew is treated as heroes. A.J. and Grace get married, with photos of Harry and the other lost crew members present.

Cast

Production

In May 1998, Walt Disney Studios chairman Joe Roth expanded the film's budget by $3 million to include additional special effects scenes. This additional footage, incorporated two months prior to the film's release, was specifically added for the television advertising campaign to differentiate the film from Deep Impact which was released a few months before.[5]

According to Bruce Joel Rubin, writer of Deep Impact, a production president at Disney took notes on everything the writer said during lunch about his script and initiated Armageddon as a counter film at Disney.[6]

Nine writers worked on the script, five of whom are credited. In addition to Robert Roy Pool, Jonathan Hensleigh, Tony Gilroy, Shane Salerno and J.J. Abrams, the writers involved included Paul Attanasio, Ann Biderman, Scott Rosenberg and Robert Towne. Originally, it was Hensleigh's script, based on Pool's original, that had been given the green-light by Touchstone. Then-producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, hired the succession of scribes for rewrites and polishes.[7]

Music

Release

Prior to Armageddon's release, the film was advertised in Super Bowl XXXII at a cost of $2.6 million.[8]

Home media

Despite a mixed critical reception, a DVD edition of Armageddon was released by The Criterion Collection, a specialist film distributor of primarily arthouse films that markets what it considers to be "important classic and contemporary films" and "cinema at its finest". In an essay supporting the selection of Armageddon, film scholar Jeanine Basinger, who taught Michael Bay at Wesleyan University, states that the film is "a work of art by a cutting-edge artist who is a master of movement, light, color, and shape—and also of chaos, razzle-dazzle, and explosion". She sees it as a celebration of working men: "This film makes these ordinary men noble, lifting their efforts up into an epic event." Further, she states that in the first few moments of the film all the main characters are well established, saying, "If that isn't screenwriting, I don't know what is".[9]

The film was also released on VHS and DVD by Touchstone Home Video on November 13, 1998, and would surpass Pretty Woman to become Buena Vista Home Entertainment's best-selling live-action title.[10] The film was released on a standard edition Blu-ray disc in 2010 with only a few special features.

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

Following the 2003 Columbia disaster, some screen captures from the opening scene where Atlantis is destroyed were passed off as satellite images of the disaster in a hoax.[11] Additionally, the American cable network FX, which had intended to broadcast Armageddon that evening, removed the film from its schedule and aired Aliens in its place.[12]

Reception

Box office

Armageddon was released on July 1, 1998 in 3,127 theaters in the United States and Canada. It ranked first at the box office with an opening weekend gross of $36 million. It grossed $201.6 million in the United States and Canada and $352.1 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $553.7 million.[2]

Critical response

Armageddon received mostly negative reviews from film critics, many of whom took issue with "the furious pace of its editing".[13] The film is on the list of Roger Ebert's most hated films.[14] In his original review, Ebert stated, "The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained". On Siskel and Ebert, Ebert gave it a Thumbs Down. However, his co-host Gene Siskel gave it a Thumbs Up. Ebert went on to name Armageddon as the worst film of 1998 (though he was originally considering Spice World).[15] Todd McCarthy of Variety also gave the film a negative review, noting Michael Bay's rapid cutting style: "Much of the confusion, as well as the lack of dramatic rhythm or character development, results directly from Bay's cutting style, which resembles a machine gun stuck in the firing position for 2½ hours."[16] The film has a cumulative 39% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes,[17] while achieving a 42% aggregate score on Metacritic. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.[18]

In April 2013, in a Miami Herald interview to promote Pain & Gain, Bay was quoted as having said:

...We had to do the whole movie in 16 weeks. It was a massive undertaking. That was not fair to the movie. I would redo the entire third act if I could. But the studio literally took the movie away from us. It was terrible. My visual effects supervisor had a nervous breakdown, so I had to be in charge of that. I called James Cameron and asked "What do you do when you're doing all the effects yourself?" But the movie did fine.[19]

Some time after the article was published, Bay changed his stance, claiming that his apology only related to the editing of the film, not the whole film,[20] and accused the writer of the article for taking his words out of context. The author of the article, Miami Herald writer Rene Rodriguez claimed: "NBC asked me for a response, and I played them the tape. I didn't misquote anyone. All the sites that picked up the story did."[21]

Scientific accuracy

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Bay admitted that the film's central premise "that NASA could actually do something in a situation like this" was unrealistic. Additionally, near the end of the credits, there is a disclaimer stating, "The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's cooperation and assistance does not reflect an endorsement of the contents of the film or the treatment of the characters depicted therein."[22]

The infeasibility of the H-bomb approach was published by four postgraduate physics students in 2011[23] and then reported by The Daily Telegraph in 2012:

A mathematical analysis of the situation found that for Willis's approach to be effective, he would need to be in possession of an H-bomb a billion times stronger than the Soviet Union's "Big Ivan", the biggest ever detonated on Earth. Using estimates of the asteroid's size, density, speed and distance from Earth based on information in the film, the postgraduate students from Leicester University found that to split the asteroid in two, with both pieces clearing Earth, would require 800 trillion terajoules of energy. In contrast, the total energy output of "Big Ivan", which was tested by the Soviet Union in 1961, was only 418,000 terajoules.[24][25]

In the commentary track, Ben Affleck says he "asked Michael why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers, and he told me to shut the fuck up, so that was the end of that talk."[26]

Accolades

The film received four Academy Award nominations at the 71st Academy Awards, for Best Sound (Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Keith A. Wester), Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Effects Editing, and Best Original Song ("I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" performed by Aerosmith).[27] The film received the Saturn Awards for Best Direction and Best Science Fiction Film (where it tied with Dark City). It was also nominated for seven Razzie Awards[28] including: Worst Actor (Bruce Willis), Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Supporting Actress (Liv Tyler), Worst Screen Couple (Tyler and Ben Affleck) and Worst Original Song. Only one Razzie was awarded: Bruce Willis received the Worst Actor award for Armageddon, in addition to his appearances in Mercury Rising and The Siege, both released in the same year as this film.

AwardCategoryWinner/NomineeResultRef.
Academy AwardsBest Sound EditingGeorge Watters IINominated[29]
Best Visual EffectsRichard R. Hoover, Patrick McClung and John FrazierNominated
Best Original Song ("I Don't Want to Miss a Thing")Diane WarrenNominated
Best Sound MixingKevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Keith A. WesterNominated
Awards of the Japanese AcademyOutstanding Foreign Language FilmArmageddonNominated
ASCAP Film and Television Music AwardsMost Performed Songs from a Motion PictureDiane WarrenWon[30]
Blockbuster Entertainment AwardsFavorite Actor - Sci-FiBruce WillisWon
Favorite Actress - Sci-FiLiv TylerNominated
Favorite Supporting Actor - Sci-FiBen AffleckWon
Billy Bob ThorntonNominated
Favorite SoundtrackTrevor Rabin and Harry Gregson-WilliamsNominated
BMI Film & TV AwardsBest MusicTrevor RabinWon
Cinema Audio Society AwardsOutstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Feature FilmKevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Keith A. WesterNominated[31]
1999 Grammy AwardsBest Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for TelevisionDiane WarrenNominated
19th Golden Raspberry AwardsWorst ActorBruce WillisWon
Worst DirectorMichael BayNominated
Worst Original Song ("I Don't Want to Miss a Thing")Diane WarrenNominated
Worst PictureJerry Bruckheimer, Gale Anne Hurd, Michael BayNominated
Worst Screen CoupleBen Affleck and Liv TylerNominated
Worst ScreenplayJonathan Hensleigh and J. J. AbramsNominated
Worst Supporting ActressLiv TylerNominated
Golden Reel AwardsBest Sound EditingKevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell and Keith A. WesterNominated
Best Sound Editing - MusicBob Badami, Will Kaplan, Shannon Erbe, Mark Jan WlodarkiewiczNominated
1998 Golden Satellite AwardsBest Original SongAerosmithWon
Best Visual EffectsRichard R. Hoover, Pat McClung and John FrazierNominated
Golden Trailer AwardsBest TrailerNominated
1999 MTV Movie AwardsBest Action SequenceArmageddonWon
Best Performance - MaleBen AffleckNominated
Best Performance - FemaleLiv TylerNominated
Best MovieArmageddonNominated
Best Movie SongAerosmithWon
Best On-Screen DuoBen Affleck and Liv TylerNominated
Saturn AwardsBest ActorBruce WillisNominated
Best CostumesMichael Kaplan, Magali GuidasciNominated
Best DirectorMichael BayWon
Best MusicTrevor RabinNominated
Best Science Fiction FilmArmageddonWon (Tied with Dark City)
Best Special EffectsRichard R. Hoover, Pat McClung and John FrazierNominated
Best Supporting ActorBen AffleckNominated
Teen Choice AwardsChoice Movie ActorNominated

Merchandising

Revell and Monogram released two model kits inspired by the film's spacecraft and the Armadillos, in 1998. The first one, "Space Shuttle with Armadillo drilling unit", included an X-71, a small, rough Armadillo and a pedestal. The second one, "Russian Space Center", included the Mir, with the docking adapter seen in the film, and another pedestal.

In 2011, Fantastic Plastic released another X-71 kit, the "X-71 Super Shuttle", the goal of which was to be more accurate than the Revell/Monogram kit.[32]

Theme park attraction

Armageddon – Les Effets Speciaux is an attraction based on Armageddon at Walt Disney Studios Park located at Disneyland Paris.[33] The attraction simulates the scene in the movie in which the Russian Space Station is destroyed.[34] Michael Clarke Duncan ("Bear" in the film) is featured in the pre-show.[34]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "ARMAGEDDON (12)". British Board of Film Classification. July 7, 1998. Retrieved May 5, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 "Armageddon (1998)". Box Office Mojo. October 11, 1998.
  3. ↑ "Disaster Movies". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2008-03-23.
  4. ↑ Plait, Phil (February 17, 2000). "Hollywood Does the Universe Wrong". Space.com.
  5. ↑ Lichtenfeld, p. 221.
  6. ↑ "Tales from the Script: Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories – – Nonfiction Book & Film Project About Screenwriting". Talesfromthescript.com. Retrieved 2011-04-29.
  7. ↑ Petrikin, Chris (June 8, 1998). "'Armageddon' credits set". Variety.com.
  8. ↑ Lichtenfeld, p. 224.
  9. ↑ The Criterion Collection: Armageddon by Michael Bay. Criterion.com. Retrieved on 2012-05-14.
  10. ↑ 1999 Annual Report (Report). The Walt Disney Company. 2000.
  11. ↑ "Photos of the Shuttle Columbia Disaster?". BreakTheChain.org. Archived from the original on January 21, 2012.
  12. ↑ Sue Chan (February 3, 2003). "TV Pulls Shuttle Sensitive Material, Hewlett-Packard Ad, Bruce Willis Movie Yanked From Air". CBS News.
  13. ↑ Lichtenfeld, Eric (2007). Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie. Wesleyan University Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-8195-6801-4.
  14. ↑ Ebert, Roger (August 11, 2005). "Ebert's Most Hated". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2011-01-14.
  15. ↑ Roger Ebert – Armageddon. Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Retrieved on 2012-05-14.
  16. ↑ Lichtenfeld, p. 220.
  17. ↑ "Armageddon". rottentomatoes.com. July 1, 1998.
  18. ↑ "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com.
  19. ↑ Rodriguez, Rene. "'Pain & Gain' revisits a horrific Miami crime" The Miami Herald (April 21, 2013).
  20. ↑ Miami Herald: Michael Bay: No apology for Armageddon (April 24, 2013)
  21. ↑ "Michael Bay Hits Back at Reporter in ‘Armageddon’ Apology Flap". Deadline Hollywood (April 2013).
  22. ↑ TOUCHSTONE PICTURES ARMAGEDDON Archived September 8, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.. movie-page.com.
  23. ↑ Back A, Brown G, Hall B, Turner S (2011). "Could Bruce Willis Save the World?". Physics Special Topics. University of Leicester. 10 (1). Archived from the original on 2013-02-26.
  24. ↑ Hall, Ben; Brown, Gregory; Back, Ashley; Turner, Stuart (1 October 2012). "It's Official: Try-Hard Bruce Willis Could Not Save the World". Astronomy & Geophysics. 53 (5): 5.5. doi:10.1111/j.1468-4004.2012.53504_6.x. ISSN 1366-8781.
  25. ↑ Collins, Nick (7 August 2012). "Bruce Willis would have needed a bigger bomb to stop asteroid, scientists say". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 8 August 2012.
  26. ↑ jeremykirk13 (2012-02-02). "61 Things We Learned from the 'Armageddon' Commentary". Film School Rejects. Retrieved 2016-06-17.
  27. ↑ "The 71st Academy Awards (1999) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org.
  28. ↑ "1998 Golden Raspberry Award Nominees and Winners". Archived from the original on March 28, 2006. Retrieved April 30, 2006.
  29. ↑
  30. ↑ "ASCAP Honors Top Film & TV Music Composers at 27th Annual Awards Celebration". Ascap.com. 2012-06-28. Retrieved 2014-06-06.
  31. ↑ Awards for Armageddon on IMDb
  32. ↑ http://fantastic-plastic.com/x-71-super-shuttle-from-armageddon-by-fantastic-plastic-models.html
  33. ↑ "Armageddon – Backlot – Disneyland® Resort Paris". International.parks.disneylandparis.com. Retrieved 2011-04-29.
  34. 1 2 "Armageddon – Les Effets Speciaux | Photos Magiques – Disneyland Paris photos". Photos Magiques. Retrieved 2011-04-29.
  • Lichtenfeld, Eric (2007). Action Speaks Louder. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-6801-5.
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